Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Funnily enough, the alpha man post got me reaching for one of my all-time-favourite romances last night just to see if I could still bear the hero.  It’s a 1970s Mills & Boon/ Harlequin by Charlotte Lamb called Dark Dominion.  It’s got an alpha hero who forces sex on the heroine (his wife) to the extent of leaving bruises on her.  So, not even a historical (unless you count the 1970s as a historical period)

I found that - yes, I still loved the book and could still empathise with the hero.  In fact, I think he is still one of my favourite heroes of all time.  This is because, the author just does such an amazing job of making you understand why the hero behaves as he does; making you see how much he hates himself for his behaviour and, ultimately, redeeming him.

(Also I love this book because the heroine is seriously considering an affair with another man - a fact that she discusses with the hero.  Cue line that you would never now see in a Harlequin romance: “I want you both”. )

Thinking about this book made me realise that the one type of alpha hero I really can’t stand is the perfect one - you know, the one that can do everything brilliantly and stands around benignly watching the heroine muck everything until she realises how fabulous he is (the Mr Knightly type).  I prefer ‘em flawed.  BUT they have to realise they are flawed and they have to change.  And they have to SHOW they’ve changed with their actions (a la Darcy) not just by saying Um, Sorry in the last few pages.

I think that’s my criteria.

And I guess it’s implicit in all of the above that I can deal with the forced sex thing if it’s intelligently written and takes place within a relationship (rather than being an early encounter between the hero/heroine - that just doesn’t work for me).

Say what you will about what makes a marriage a marriage...historically and even today IIRC, never having sex in your marriage can get it annulled. I don’t find it unreasonable for someone getting married to expect to have sex with her/his spouse.

Hmmm,
I need to think about this one.  I know I stopped reading anything by COulter because of her HRR (High Rape Ratio) in her books.  I can’t remember the last one I read, but I do remember feeling I needed a shower afterwards.

Same with To Have and To Hold.  I hate that book!  I threw sent it to Goodwill feeling guilty. 

I believe in changes in characters, but characters don’t change.  Maybe I know to much, but for someone to change really horribly bad behavior, they have to have a crisis or hit a wall-- pretty much a near death experience or a Road to Damascus moment.  The reason for the change has got to be profound enough to cause the person to change in realizing the horror of past acts. 

They just can’t suddenly go “Oh!  Rape is bad!  I feel bad for having done it!  I won’t do it anymore!”

It never ever ever happens that way in RL, and I can’t buy into it, even in an historical setting.

Interesting.  The second one you describe bothers me more than the first, and I think the key difference is his attitude.  Expecting sex within marriage, especially in a historical context, is one thing, but when he’s enjoying the fact that she doesn’t enjoy it, then it’s crossed the line (for me) into emotional sadism.  And that, I’m not cool with.

Marie,
You just described the mind of a criminal rapist.  They WANT the victim scared, upset, hating what’s happening. 

OR, they twist in their minds that she is enjoying it, but not admitting it to herself.

Either attitude or behavior in a book is instant Squick and in the trash.  These guys belong in prison, not books.

I...don’t know.

I take your point, Sarah. I really do. And you’re right. Sex is part of marriage, and a woman who married a man in any time should be aware that she will be expected to have sex with him in the bargain. It is, legally speaking, part of what seals a marriage, as Kassiana has pointed out.

But. But...historically, a lot of things didn’t count as rape. Even now, a prostitute gets raped, and I bet most people are like, “Well, she is a hooker. Why didn’t she just give it to him?” It does not make it any less rape that she is required to perform.

You could argue, I suppose, that a woman gave consent by marrying the man--and I would actually agree to that point.  (Which is why forced marriage makes me sick to my stomach--if she’s forced into it, then there is never any consent, and she’s being raped.)

I’m just dreadfully uncomfortable with the idea that spousal rape is okay because it was legal and because sex is part of marriage. I can agree that the hero in the first book is probably not entirely vile...but in the second case, I read the forced “conjugal relations” as part and parcel of his abuse.

After all, a lot of things were perfectly legal and even expected in marriages in the past--including physical abuse and male infidelity, and I think if we saw a hero doing either of those things, we’d be completely unsympathetic.

To make a totally dramatic and probably unfair comparison...slave owners were also totally within their rights to demand sex from their slaves. Women who were slaves had no choice but to agree--no matter what. But would we find it romantic or redeemable if the hero kept having sex with a slave (let’s make it his friend’s slave, who was loaned to him as a birthday gift, since we wouldn’t be able to find a slave-owning hero attractive, I’m sure) against her will? Even though she has no right to refuse?

Obviously, it’s a totally unfair comparison (I do not want to diminish the real horror of slavery in this comparison)--but in this ONE instance ONLY, married white women and black women in the nineteenth century had something in common. Neither could refuse the sexual advances of the men who legally owned them.

And I just realized my comparison breaks down b/c a slave does not consent to slavery, but a woman, again, consents to marriage. Usually. So, feel free to ignore and/or flame me. :/

Snark,
You are right, that especially in an historical setting, a woman consented to marriage and knew that sex was required. 

Granted though, she didn’t’ have much choice in some settings, it was either marry a or b, or go to a convent, or be thrown out of the house, or starve or whatever.

So often, the marriage was based on a primal survival and not a whole lot of choice.  And sex was, well part of the deal.  So the sex may have been an endurance issue ("I think I’ll paint the ceiling beige") versus rape.

Coulter has a few other late 80s/early 90s novels that have incidents with spousal rape.  The Sherbrooke Bride was one of the first romance novels I ever read and I remember being shocked to the core that the hero kidnaps his own wife and rapes her. 

A later Coulter novel that I recently re-read, Night Fire, has a completely different take on spousal rape.  The heroine is brutally abused (physically, sexually and emotionally) by her first husband.  When the hero shows up, he bumbles along at first, trying to figure out why the heroine’s so prickly and skittish of being around him.  Once all is revealed (of course during a scene of extreme illness when it’s unlikely the heroine will survive - blah blah blah), he tries to enable her move beyond her past.  However, his methods at times really irked me, so it made me wonder: is outright spousal rape more effective than a man playing on his wife’s insecurities to help her “grow” as a person?  I don’t know ...

I mean “more effective” in terms of moving the plot, or offering a hurdle for the hero and heroine to get over.

... I think what irks me is something more along the lines of when historical heroines, spawned from the creative brains of modern-day women, think and act like modern-day women.  That is:  are somehow imbued with an anachronistic feminist understanding that even they they’re married, this is rape, and rape is bad.  It’s too easy—wouldn’t it be more realistic, and create a more complex heroine, if she, with all her red-headed fiery wit, came to that understanding/dealt with it in a unique way realistic to the time period?

I think this also brings up the interesting question of what we feel we should and should not get off on—during my senior women’s studies seminar in college, we read a passage from a textbook about feminist perspectives on sexuality that used a really kinky passage from an old Norman Mailer book as a means of demonstrating “rapacious” sexuality, a woman being coerced into sex by a chainsmoking Alpha male who calls her a slut and tells her to introduce a candlestick into her hoo.  The author of the article’s intention was for you, the educated pro-woman progressive thinker, to immediately recognize it as a mysogyny because A) the coersion and B) it was written by Mailer.
And all of us sat there pretty quiet, until finally a friend of mine said—uh, I thought it was pretty hot, actually.  And one by one we all agreed, thus sparking a discussion of how we step into dangerous territory when we accept tabboos and regulations on what we can and cannot get off on.

Merchant & Ivory’s Maurice had similar issues gay romance wise. I mean who in their right mind would spend years hanging around with Hugh Grant, playing Clive, putting up with all that internalized shame and emotional abuse for a platonic “love that dare not speak it’s name”?

I just sat there through the whole thing watching the infrequent kissing and wondering why Maurice did not make a booty call down at the local gym he spent so much time at. There were guys there i am sure that would have given him a quicky.

Sometimes historical romance seems to have been written in a bubble that has no relation to the world I live in or even what I know of the time period.

*delurks*

Catherine Coulter’s “Midsummer Magic” is my ultimate example of the wallbanger. I have never felt more hatred for a romance novel before or since that book, and I have not picked up a Coulter novel since. To me, the hero’s behavior is so over-the-top, so cruel, so abusive that there’s no redeeming him. IIRC (and I did try to block the book out of my head, so I might be misremembering), the hero only starts using the cream after his father yells at him for hurting Frances so badly that the bed is bloody. Yuck yuck yuck. The only thing that could have redeemed the story for me would have been if Frances had left the “hero” either for his father or for his nice secretary. But to turn around and fall in love with the rapist? Did I mention yuck? I hate this book so much that it’s driven me out of lurkdom!

And yet so many people love it and I just don’t understand!

On the other hand, I agree that I do have a higher tolerance for unacceptable behavior when I find it in an historical. Jamie beats Claire in Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander,” and while that totally put off one of my friends, I was able to mentally justify it as historically accurate.

I think the heroine’s reason for refusal is also an issue.  I have little sympathy for a heroine who marries the rich duke to save her family and then locks the bedroom door every night because she despises her new husband.  Lady, he didn’t marry you just for the right to support you and your assorted impoverished relatives.

Now, if said heroine routinely submits to sex and then at some point is ill, or not in the mood or whatever and the hero won’t take no for an answer - THAT would be a deal breaker for me.  Yes, sex is expected in a marriage.  But there are limits, is all I’m saying.  The hero who expects his wife to lift her skirts whenever, where ever, just because he is the man and it’s her wifely duty, and woe betide her if she refuses. . .yuck.  I immediately lose any sympathy and any faith he can be redeemed.

Leslie:  totally agree with you on the historical accuracy part of things.  In pretty much all historical settings (especially those involving A) farming or B) fortunes) it was just understood that marriage = sex.  Women were expected to produce a kid, or preferably two.  Everyone involved knew it.  Depending on the status of the woman, she wasn’t necessarily expected to enjoy sex anyway. So I’m agree Sarah on not being quite as bothered by forced sex within a marriage as I am otherwise. 

Of course all the above depends on the definition of ‘forced’.  Outright brutality doesn’t cut it.

“I think the heroine’s reason for refusal is also an issue.  I have little sympathy for a heroine who marries the rich duke to save her family and then locks the bedroom door every night because she despises her new husband.” (Melanie Hayden)

An example of the unlocked bedroom door is Heyer’s “A Civil Contract” where couple marry with no romance but presumably have sex (Heyer doesn’t go into that, though the heroine becomes pregnant so you can guess!) and fall in love by the end. Not really rape I would have thought, since the characters are so matter of fact about their marriage and the lack of passion at the start but make an effort to be “normal”.

It all depends on the circumstances, morality at the time, morality now. No wonder we all like different books! Its all Fiction, so I give authors leeway to tell an interesting story whether I personally would like to be in that situation or not.

You know, I was already vaguely disappointed that the Catherine Coulter book I’m reading right now (_The Duke_) is so tame and now I’m really diasappointed! ;-)

Some historical writers write an expectation into their books that marriage is only for heirs and the husband will “leave the wife alone” and go to a mistress after awhile. How does that fit into this scenario?

The only book I’ve read with spousal rape was Olivia O’Neil’s Imperial Nights, and even then the heroine gives in, grudgingly, to her marital duties. I was more squicked out by the fact that she was in love with her stepbrother.

And all of us sat there pretty quiet, until finally a friend of mine said—uh, I thought it was pretty hot, actually.  And one by one we all agreed, thus sparking a discussion of how we step into dangerous territory when we accept tabboos and regulations on what we can and cannot get off on.

I can’t help myself from stating the obvious here, which is that “dangerous territory” can occur both in the direction of freedom of speech and in the direction of restriction of speech where taboo issues are concerned, and just because something turns people on doesn’t automatically make it right (just as something isn’t automatically wrong because it makes a particular individual uncomfortable).

Presumably, though, the textbook wasn’t arguing for the suppression of Mailer’s work, since it was reproducing it?

For me the reaction you and your friends had raises the question of why some people enjoy descriptions of “rapacious” sex (or rapist alpha heroes) and others don’t, but I’m not sure it’s a question that could be answered easily. It’s also interesting that every single one of you felt the same way. It makes me wonder if there was either something you all had in common which lead to you have exactly the same reactions to the material (because presumably there are people who would not have had those reactions).

And does peer pressure (in either direction) and/or what’s felt to be the norm, also play a part in people’s reactions to this sort of material? To get back to Sarah’s post, at a time when marital rape wasn’t recognised as a crime, that presumably affected the attitudes of both the husband and wife in the circumstances. And when rape was more prevalent in romance novels did that normalise it for readers and, in a sense, make them feel they’d been given permission to find it “hot”. Or did it actually encourage them to find something “hot” which some of them might have initially found distasteful? Again,there were probably a variety of different responses, both to historical marital rape and from readers of rape in romances.

I have a degree in history, so while I agree with the accuracy of what Sarah is saying, I still have to say I do NOT want to read about it in my romance novels. Flog me if you wish, but romance has a lot to do with fantasy (because not all Scottish women are fiery redheads, right?) and spousal rape is SOOOO not my fantasy. Bad, alpha male. BAD!

Laura Vivanco:

I should have mentioned that this was a class of six women, all women’s studies majors, representing the gamut of sexual orientations and backgrounds, etc.  And every one with a pretty big mouth.  It was a safe environment to talk about sex—this discussion was specifically about feminist writings on sexual desire, and whether having sexual fantasies based on some kind of power differential (the Alpha-heroes, for instance, or anything by Ayn Rand) signifies that your sexual fantasies are based more on “male desires” than your own—that your finding a non-consenual sex scenario in the least bit appealing is symptomatic of a “colonized mind.”

What was really intersting to me there was a) how each student answered the question of whether or not we were “bad feminists” for finding some pleasure in the Mailer scenario (overwhelmingly the answer was “fuck, no"), and b), questioning whether or not my sexual curriculum vitae has in fact been influenced by misogyny/societal expectations at large—and I would say that on the whole if we drink the water, we absorb the chlorine.  It’s unavoidable.  Which brings me to c), what do we do (or not do) with that?

I am with Crystal in the historical accuracy is great, but this is fiction damn it!

But can I hit to off topic button again here?…

“marital rape wasn’t recognized as a crime”

You know, I recently read The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by C.A. Tripp. They have found a letter from Billy Greene, who coached Lincoln in grammar, writing glowingly while describing his wonderful thighs. They also note that Lincoln had a body guard during his years in the White House that slept with him when his wife was out of town.

The rest of the god damned book rested on trying to view Lincoln’s behavior while president in regards to him possibly being gay. LOL!

I was amazed that an obviously “somewhat” intelligent person who spent the time writing a book about this would not have at the very least attempted to view their findings through the cultural framework of the period. I personally would have added in all the evidence that Lincoln had mistresses too besides his rocky marriage.

My point is that unless you are talking about contemporary material you should be careful in using our post Kinsey Reports sexual morality point of view and try to leverage that evolved thinking in an attempt to understanding historical relationships even as recent as 200 years ago.

Calling Abraham Lincoln gay because he may have had sexual contact with male friends while they shared a bed back in their time is as silly and narrow minded as having an intelligent discussion about marital rape in regards to a whole culture that existed “way back when” and who were all raised with no understanding of such things as marital rape.

In their time a woman betraying the God given rights of such a “sacred vow” might be seen as the selfish, evil and most likely a nasty villain.

Sorry I just wanted to point that out.

Just to ensure that things remain clear, my comment above in no way endorses any kind of rape.

In fiction, I don’t mind forced-type scenarios at all...as long as the woman’s enjoying herself. When she stops, that’s when I stop, too.

Midsummer Magic...first half was almost unbearable. Second half was ... interesting. Personally, I prefer Calypso Magic, which had far less abuse and a nice spanking scene.

I’ve started to post this a couple of times but I simply cannot remember what happened in what specific books, but I think I’ll give it a stab.

Roberta Gellis has managed to take wife beating, forced marriage and marital rape and make them palatable within the historical context by the manner in which the heroine reacts to the circumstances.

One of her books Masque of Gold-- I remember this one-- had the heroine married by her father to an old man who had wealth and power in the merchant community of London-- she was maybe 19, he might have been 50’s or 60’s.  While the section with the marriage does not last very long, Gellis manages to convey that the heroine decided she was lucky because he was not unkind to her and set out to make him a good wife (12th century). 

In another, the heroine is in the complete control of a sadistic monster, who marries her to a traumatized and maimed young man-- part of a thoroughly dastardly plot.  Again the marriage does not last long but the heroine realizes that her best effort is to try to make the marriage work, which means having sex with him in order to legitimate the union.

Then there was the time that her heroine, who is already married to the hero, considers whether she should or should not have sex with King John in order to secure some protection for her lands (I think) when her husband was off fighting-- probably as John’s vassal.  She rationally examines it from the angle of whether it would be a benefit or a detriment-- and John is not an attractive proposition in this book.

Any way in each of these cases the woman acted in her own best interest rather than simply being acted upon. (Zomg, teh Sex-- cannot has teh Sex.) While her books are historicals with romantic content rather than romances, her resilient heroines make them a pleasure for me to read.

whether having sexual fantasies based on some kind of power differential (the Alpha-heroes, for instance, or anything by Ayn Rand) signifies that your sexual fantasies are based more on “male desires” than your own

Leslie, I would have had a problem with the way that discussion was framed too, because of the binary opposition that’s being set up between “male desires” and “female desires,” as though all men must be the same (and into power/domination) and all women must be the same (and into equality (or submission?)) and that that’s how it should be and otherwise there’s something “colonized” about the person.

As you say, “on the whole if we drink the water, we absorb the chlorine.  It’s unavoidable”, but clearly people do respond differently to the water with chlorine, and even if we all stopped drinking it/had never drunk it, and our responses were different to the ones we have now, I very much doubt that all women would end up having identical responses.

>>>That is:  are somehow imbued with an anachronistic feminist understanding that even they they’re married, this is rape, and rape is bad. >>>>

I see your point here - but don’t you think they still felt… ewwwhh.

These women knew they had to get married. They knew sex was a requirement. I don’t think they shouted “rape” but it had to suck in those cases where there was no physical attraction or the husband was a perve or abusive. 

It was Clan of Cave Bear where Ayla (???sp) knows she’s got to get down on the ground but feels a sense of wrongness about it. Rape is the word we use to define that feeling.

I didn’t have a problem with Hawk. And I think the poster who said it’s the man’s attitude toward the wife that makes the difference. He didn’t really take pleasure… well extra pleasure… from it. Get in, get out, get her pregnant. In his mind that’s what married sex was. And I felt it was more genuine than many other historicals where the heroine goes from virgin to sex goddess in one scene.

I actually have more of an issue with CC’s next rape in that series when Lyon rapes his wife because he sees another woman cheating on her husband.

I loved that hero and had to really get over what he’d done even after Diana (wife) forgave him.

For me, it’s all about the portrayal of marital rape (forced sex with no enjoyment on the part of the victim.) I will never, ever find marital rape sexy, and it irritates me mightily when authors try to spin it that way.  Rape is not about being sexy.  Rape is about power, and if it shows up in a historical in that context I have absolutely no problem with it.  Men believed they had the right to take sex from their wife, and it was unpleasant and awful but it was a fact of life.  No issue with that.  But when an author writes a rape scene like a love scene, it turns my stomach.

>>>>But when an author writes a rape scene like a love scene, it turns my stomach>>>>

See I don’t know how you do that? If it’s rape - meaning she doesn’t want it - how can it possibly be sexy?

In my experience any time “rape” was used - there was always the intent that it was supposed to be bad, tense, punishment… whatever.

There are those times where the hero convinces the herione otherwise… but to me that crosses over into forced seduction.

I think that’s where the Flame and Flower falls. Did he ultimately convince her she wanted it...no not really. But I don’t know that I ever saw that scene as “sexy”. Their “sex” scene came out that end of the story.

But I think once she’s into it - it ceases to be rape. Doesn’t it?

Wow that’s probably a very slippery slope.

I’m glad DS brought up Roberta Gellis, because one of the things I liked most about her books was how she made you feel the characters were historically authentic compared to other Romance heroines. 

One Gellis heroine was walking at night and was terrified of demons and other assorted evils.  She wasn’t a wuss, this was part of her medieval worldview.  Another heroine had a scene where she lovingly delouses her husband after he returns from traveling.

Gellis’ heroines would accept it as a matter of course that their husbands were entitled to “demand their rights”, just as the husband might feel free to make those demands, but it was always handled in an intelligent and true to the story fashion for a medieval setting.

the one type of alpha hero I really can’t stand is the perfect one - you know, the one that can do everything brilliantly and stands around benignly watching the heroine muck everything until she realises how fabulous he is (the Mr Knightly type).  I prefer ‘em flawed.  BUT they have to realise they are flawed and they have to change.  And they have to SHOW they’ve changed with their actions (a la Darcy) not just by saying Um, Sorry in the last few pages

I agree.  It’s great to have heros like Capt. Wentworth who can look up, halfway through, and go “Oh, huh.  I was blaming you for ruining my life, but now I realize that I was just in a grouchy mood and pissed-off that you dumped me nearly a decade ago, even though you thought that you were doing the right thing.”

Alright, bad example, but I totally agree with you.  Likewise, I don’t like “perfect” heriones (Mary Sues).  Everyone needs to have emotional growth, or the story isn’t good.

The talk of spousal rape reminds me of a few classica examples.  One is “Gone With the Wind,” and the whole “swirling darkness” scene.  Basically, a lot of femenists hate it because, though it doesn’t show the actual event, it shows Rhett literally carrying Scarlett off to bed, while she protests and tells him that he’s drunk; the next scene is Scarlett, in the morning, glad that what happened happened.  Most people assume that it really was concentual, after the charcters wandered off the page, but we don’t know.

It’s one of the biggest sticking points that I have with GWTW.  The other is the condonement of racism, but both really need to be looked at through the historical perspective, as said.  Society is shocked when they find out that Rhett and Scarlett have seperate bedrooms-- a wife should sleep with her husband, whether she wants to or not.  No one is shocked that Scarlett’s family owns a huge platation with hundreds of abused slaves-- what, you expect white people to pick their own cotton?  In THOSE shoes?

I think that spousal rape is forgivable if the husband honestly has no idea that he’s raping.  Yes, it’s hard to believe that anyone could be that clueless, but some authors can pull it off.  What makes spousal rape really, REALLY wrong is when the husband* knows that his wife is miserable, and continues to act, either for his own pleasure or to cause his wife MORE pain (for example, Niamh’s husband in “Son of the Shadows;” his emotional and physical abuse scar her for the rest of her life, though she recovers a little bit before her death in the next book).

Have any of you ever read a scene where a husband raped his wife in order to punish her (okay, this one bugs me THE MOST), even if he didn’t enjoy it himself?  There is something a bit like this in “The Notorious Mrs Winston,” but the husband can’t go through with it (not because it’s fucking wrong, but just because he’s a perv, and she’s not a small child).

Another classic example (remember when I was rambling about GWTW?) is King Arthur’s bith.  Arthurian legands are constantly being retold and reworked, over the years, so there are a lot of different versions of Arthur’s conception-- probably more than there are variations on spelling the character’s names.

Generally it is said that Arthur’s mother was the beautiful Igraine, and in love with her husband, Duke Gorlois.  King Uthur decided that Igraine was pretty hot, and told her to sleep with him.  She refused, and ran away to tell her husband.  He decided that maybe it wasn’t such a smart idea for them to be staying in Uthur’s castle.

They sneak home, in the middle of the night, and when Uthur finds out, he declares war on the duke.  Gorlois is eventually killed in battle, and Merlin enchants Uthur to look like the dead man.  News of Glorlois’ death won’t reach Irgaine until the next morning, so she assumes that the dude who looks exactly like her husband is, in fact, her husband.  She doesn’t give concent, but only because she doesn’t know that she’s about to conceive the once and future king with a complete stranger.  I suppose that this is some of the “getting the herione into bed with trickery” mentioned above.

I think that some of the differnt version arise from how incomprehensable it is to modern folk that a man could order a woman to sleep with him, just because she’s his social inferior, and that a woman would marry a man who killed her husband and raped her, even though she would have protection for herself and her children only through having a husband.  In most versions of the story, Igraine and Gorlois have two to seven daughters, and Irgaine is already pregnant with Arthur when she remarries.  There is no way that she’s going to let eight kids die, just to prove a point.  If she didn’t concent to marriage, Uthur would just force her into it.

Think of all the arranged marriages, some made when the bride and groom were infants.  They never gave concent.  Maybe they weren’t even old enough to talk, let alone comprehend what was going on.  But concent would never need to be made later, because they were married.

*I can’t actually remember any female-->male rapes, in literature.  No one writes them, not because they don’t happen, but because male rape is thought by so many people to be a urban myth.  The man didn’t consent, but he could have overpowered to woman (unless he’s comatose, a la Candle and Lire), and anyway, look down-- see?  He’s enjoying it.

PS: If you read all this, you are a saint.  If you didn’t, I’m basically just agreeing with everyone else that rape is bad.

I share some similar thoughts on historical accuracy issue.  I think that’s all well and good, but I don’t read the novels for historical accuracy.

Many, many women in the past did not enjoy sex, often because of the restrictions around sex which disallowed men or women to understand women’s bodies well.  And women in the past put up with a lot in marriage that they wouldn’t today.  My gr. grandmother, a mother of 12 children, told my mother, when asked why she just didn’t say no, “You didn’t say no...not then.”

I don’t want to read a book about a heroine who is timid and lives within a historically accurate model.  Then that would be no fun...for me or the heroine.

These women knew they had to get married. They knew sex was a requirement. I don’t think they shouted “rape” but it had to suck in those cases where there was no physical attraction or the husband was a perve or abusive.

They say that Victorian sex ed was just a mother’s warning to her daughter: “Lie back and think of England.”

Elizabeth--I do remember a female->male rape scene.  Don’t remember the author or the title, so perhaps the bitchery will chime in:

It was a medieval where a young wife with the aid of her men-at-arms captures a knight returning home from the wars.  She ties him to a bed and each night arouses him against his will so he can impregnate her, allowing her to deliver an heir to her impotent (or dead?) husband’s estate.

He eventually escapes and kidnaps her for revenge, but I can’t remember the name of it.

It wasn’t a keeper, but I remembered that bit.

I can’t actually remember any female-->male rapes, in literature.

Well, it’s not literature, but in one Johanna Lindsey book the heroine ties down the hero and de-virginizes herself on him, getting pregnant at the same time.  It was some convoluted old-man-husband-dies-on-top-of-her-and-she-needs-to-get-pregnant-so-she-can-keep-the-castle-so-her-maid-kidnaps-some-random-dude-for-her-to-rape plot.

Sure, the hero ends up kidnapping her and tying her to the bed to rape her, but we aren’t talking about that part.

I can’t remember the title, but I’m talking about the same one as Darlene.

Huh.  Now I need to find those books.  (That book?  Could they possibly be the same one?)

I’m quite impressed by the kidnapping maid.  Your book sounds interesting, too, Darlene, but I wonder why the herione bothered kidnapping a stranger, if she already had men-at-arms lying around?  Perhaps they weren’t cute enough.

It’s nice to know that there are books about female-->male rape.  (I don’t mean that rape is nice; it is in all ways evil.  But it’s nice to know that it is not a completely male-character-dominated literary convention, especially since most of the books that we’re talking about were written by women.  With the exception of “Maurice,” which was written by E M Forrestor, IIRC).

Thanks!

Oh, okay, now I’ve read your second post, Rosemary!  One book, got it.  And now I really need to find it.

The Lindsay book is “Prisioner of my Desire”

Jo Berverley’s Forbidden has an experienced heroine getting the sleeping virgin hero erect and mounting him.  He winds up enjoying it, but it is a rape.

From what I remember, (and I have obviously forgotten some parts) when her husband was young, he was some monstrously huge viking-style blonde, and the men-at-arms who she trusted enough to let in on the kidnapping were not the same size or coloring.

The hero was a monstrously huge viking-style blond.

Man, that book would have been an awesome Guess That Lonely Heart.

I have never bought the “rape is historically accurate” argument as a justification for the raping alpha “hero”. Sure, rape happened in the past (and it happens today), but just because the misty veil of time separates us from the act doesn’t transform rape into morally acceptable behavior. And I simply can’t accept as fact the idea that this was normal behavior. I just don’t buy it. Furthermore, just because something was legal doesn’t make it right or heroic. In fact, just the opposite. Often what makes a man heroic, IMO, is that he behaves better than his peers. If he’s such an alpha-stud, I’d like to see him put in the work to actually seduce his wife (or mistress, or whatever) into wanting him.

I agree with the person who brought up the equivalence to men having the ‘legal right’ to rape Slave women. I don’t care what the legal rights are.

In Victorian times, men could force maids to have sex with them too, and if the girl got pregnant, she was ‘turned off without a character’, presumably to take up prostitution.

If a man has sex with a woman, knowing she actively doesn’t want it, then it’s rape, and he’s a scumbag.

I share some similar thoughts on historical accuracy issue.  I think that’s all well and good, but I don’t read the novels for historical accuracy.

When I read fiction, I’m not necessarily looking for a history lesson.  But often I am looking for something different from my everyday experience and attitudes.  I wouldn’t want a steady diet of rape scenes, but I do want to read about a variety of interactions.  When I read too many similar books, I miss being stimulated to think about these issues.

Various thoughts:

Rape and rape fantasies are two very different things. But they often get confused and conflated in romances.

Our standards have changed since Charlotte Lamb wrote Dark Dominion. The violence level against women in romances has dropped quite dramatically since the 1970s, when marital rapes were a common outcome of marital fights. Even then, though, they were considered outre behavior and both parties knew it. The “I’ll drag us through the mud rather than admit an honest emotion” approach to romance is out of fashion. 

Sheila Bishop did a book about outright wife abuse years ago, and the wife was eventually told to go back and take it, that she was wrong to flee the situation, wrong to seek another man, and wrong to think that her husband should change his behavior. That book would not fly today.

The tolerable part of “close your eyes and think of England” conjugal sex was that the wife was neither expected nor encouraged to be enthusiastic. That took some of the burden off the encounter for the woman, who listened to an animal grunting on top of her, perhaps with disgust but perhaps with sympathy, but was herself sexually unmoved by the experience. That is very different from a rape in which the rapist is paying pleased attention to every flinch of his victim. Yuck. No to sadism. No to rape.

The average historical man from these eras wasn’t rich, or extraordinarily witty/intelligent, didn’t have thighs of steel, or a gorgeous face, or even a mouth full of good teeth. He probably didn’t even have very many baths a year. And, yeah, he also held some nasty freaking ideas about what he had the right to do to women.

I don’t want to read about that guy.

I don’t understand why it’s okay to break with historical accuracy by making the guy rich, hot, hygienic, and minty fresh tasting, but damn, ladies, we gotta keep teh historically accurate rape! ‘Cause it’s the TRUFAX!

If that’s a kink, okay. Cool. Enjoy. But enjoy it ‘cause it’s a kink, not ‘cause historical accuracy is dah bomb.

If it’s were all about the historical accuracy, we’d better have our martial rapes with a side of stinky underarms, unwashed cock, rank, fetid mouth, poverty, a potato-like face and a doughy body that, despite its unattractiveness, can still hold down and hurt.

I have never bought the “rape is historically accurate” argument as a justification for the raping alpha “hero”. Sure, rape happened in the past (and it happens today), but just because the misty veil of time separates us from the act doesn’t transform rape into morally acceptable behavior.

*nods* Yeah. As mentioned in the post, spousal rape is still considered a lesser crime, but that doesn’t *actually* make it less rape.

I’d agree that someone refusing sex in a marriage entirely is unreasonable, and grounds for separation. At the same time, that doesn’t make it right for the other person to force sex upon them, you know? And while it may be historically accurate (hell, history has nothing to do with it, it happens *today*) for a man to force sex on a reluctant wife, I’m sure as hell not going to like him for it. It doesn’t mean I’m going to think of him as evil incarnate, either (depending on how it’s portrayed- enjoying that she hates it? Yeah, no sympathy here.) but… I don’t know, I feel like you can sympathize with the hero’s situation to a point without turning around and saying “well, *she* should have known better.” It sucks for everyone involved, but placing the majority of the blame on the person with the least amount of power in the situation makes me deeply uncomfortable.

~The tolerable part of “close your eyes and think of England” conjugal sex was that the wife was neither expected nor encouraged to be enthusiastic.~

I agree with that and to add my two cents’ worth, wondered whether there is any historical romance in which the heroine ever thinks something like ‘I’m really not up for it tonight, but I’ll do it anyway so he’ll stop bugging me about not getting any, and let me go to sleep’? Or would that (perhaps) add too much realism to a historical fantasy?

I do agree that sex was considered to be a conjugal right, but there are other influences on the way sex regarded was even within marriage depending on which period and culture we’re talking about. A court-case springs to mind in the Early Modern period in France, in which a woman sued her husband for witholding sex and it was held that it was his duty. I’m afraid I don’t know whether she assaulted him in any way to get her ‘right’ or what happened afterwards.

Then there’s also the Western folk myth that was quite popular till not too recently that a woman can only conceive if she’s had an orgasm. Unfortunately this works both ways and in cases of rape always to the woman’s detriment, but since one of the reasons for marriage was procreation it leads me to assume that men were trying to make it good.

Again in the Early Modern period, this time in England, a book called ‘Aristotle’s Masterpiece’ was a bestseller. Basically it can be read as a sex education book, giving helpful hints for increased pleasure and also dealing with birth control. I’m afraid that I don’t know what the illiterate did.

What I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is that I find it difficult to read a historical romance which makes the equation ‘marriage=conjugal rights=marital rape is okay’ without taking into account the sexual mores of the time and the rather more complicated culturally or religiously determined frameworks of belief around it.

Apologies for ranting and thanks to anyone who’s read this far… ;-)

And another reason women consented to sex with their husbands is they wanted children.

Can’t say my thoughts are very organized about this topic, but a few things strike me after reading through the post and comments:

I have the impression that eras and cultures in which arranged marriages are/were common are also known for restricting unmarried women’s access to sexual knowledge and for segregating the sexes, so young women in these cases may have only a rudimentary understanding of what sex/marriage would be like for them. Someone with a broader knowledge of world history can feel free to set me straight on this, but arranged marriage is only part of a larger societal context in which certain women (for example, upper-class women in 19th c.) are seen as a sort of privileged class of assets which need to be protected to preserve their value. Consent might not exactly be informed consent for these girls. Not only are they likely to be sexually ignorant, but they rarely interact with men outside of their immediate families. Okay, Gwendolyn. You’ve been kept cloistered for 17 years, now choose whom you want to love, honor and obey for the rest of your life.

If women were aware of the vicissitudes of the marital practices, so too were the men. If a man married a woman who then refused to perform her conjugal duties, he was legally able to either annul or divorce her ass. Both women and men with any choice in the matter surely sought spouses with whom they thought they’d be sexually compatible, no? When I read something like “I fear we should not suit” in a 19th c. novel, I assume it was that era’s dating code for “I don’t think I could face sex with you without some risk of projectile vomiting.”

In most cases, you guys are talking about historical settings written by contemporary authors. When they write a scene where a husband forces the issue with his wife, they are fully aware of how that will read to a contemporary audience. If the hero can claim cultural context, the author surely can not. So, my conclusion when I read one of these scenes is that the author intends the scene to do one of three things: 1) remind us we’re reading a historical 2) introduce some bad behavior which can then be quickly excused by historical context 3) introduce some BDSM fantasy elements in a way which is acceptable in a historical romance setting. The first seems a rather cheap way of establishing cultural context; the second I don’t really buy, because rape has always been rape, even when it was legal; the third again seems like a lazy writer’s crutch. I rarely see a marital rape scene in Romance that I don’t think could have been either omitted or better handled through another plot device. If you want to feed BDSM fantasies, use a forced seduction if you must, rather than a rape. But there are much better ways to do it, even in a historical.

BDSM is not about rape. That is like saying Movies are about rape. Some, maybe, occasionally are, but most are not. BDSM is mostly about a lot of other things, consent being one of them.

Actually, forced sex in any circumstance whatsoever is to me completely unacceptable. A hero who does it once, no matter the circumstances, is not a hero to me, and I stop reading the book. No exceptions.

I don’t care if they’re married. I don’t care what year it is. I’d be more comfortable if he killed her.

Again, this is my personal bias and I don’t expect others to feel the same way.

I find it interesting in talk about fiction that people are so strongly opposed to even acknowledging a well written rape scene.

Believe me, as someone who has lived through child abuse I find it interesting because this is about fiction not reality.

I know that in reality the ages we consider children now were considered adult then. I honestly have no problem reading stories that do not hide that fact.

Ah, historical accuracy - bleah!

Centuries ago, it was legal to torture ‘infidels’ and burn them at the stake. But I don’t want to read about a man who does such things getting a happy ending!

That said, I do agree it’s ridiculous how many heroines marry an orphaned aristocrat hero whose only heir is an idiot cousin - and think that they’re not gonna have to do the mattress mambo with the guy.

To me, it’s a PC thing the authors do - “We can’t have a heroine who actually thinks about going to bed with a man she’s not in love with!”

Do you want TRUE historical accuracy? Have the heroine marry the dude, pop out a heir or two, and then go party with her own lover. THAT’S how the nobility often managed their lives back then.

Would a Romance containing “forced sex” that happens within a marriage in a modern country where a woman has no right to say “no” as a wife and very little choice in whom she marries in the first place not actually be rape? Sure, there’s blood, pain and humiliation, but the culture says “no!” so it’s okay?

And does this argument excuse the violation done to actual women who lived in historical periods where their husbands could legally rape them, and hated it? If she married him--even if she didn’t have another choice besides starvation, or even if she had no way of knowing he was a rapist--she asked for it? Even if she didn’t agree with her culture, and thought it was wrong?

Would a Romance containing “forced sex” that happens within a marriage in a modern country where a woman has no right to say “no” as a wife and very little choice in whom she marries in the first place not actually be rape? Sure, there’s blood, pain and humiliation, but the culture says “no!” so it’s okay?

Yes, it’s called OZ. I own all the seasons.

It was great!

Oops were they married?

God, I still remember when they were rehearsing the Shakespeare play and Keller ties Beecher up at knife point.

That was weird fucked up love there man.

Teddy, I didn’t mean to sound like I was equating BDSM and rape. I do think that some authors write scenes that read to me like rape but are obviously meant as “hot” sex that plays to those readers who have fantasies involving control/domination/pain/humiliation--what some here have called “rape fantasies” which I think is a misnomer--which I’m referring to as BDSM fantasies. The failure by these authors to distinguish clearly between rape and sexual power games is part of what I am objecting to. If it reads to me like the woman is being raped, it doesn’t really matter to me what the hell the historical context is, yadayada. There is still something about the scene that is not reading as consensual sex. Whether that’s in how I’m interpreting the writing is another story.

:D Oz? I’ve heard of this rapacious wonderland of dirtybadwrong non-con, though I haven’t visited there myself!

Personally, male rape in literature doesn’t bother me in the same ways that female rape does because (a)it’s not something that weighs over the majority of grown men the way it does grown women (myself included) because it’s just highly freaking unlikely that it will happen to them outside of prison, and (b) it hasn’t been socially and legally encouraged the same way female rape has. Heck, the failures of the American justice system to address rape justly means that there’s an ongoing almost-sanction, despite laws against it.

Well megalith,

You will not ever make me feel bad about my Christopher Meloni naked in the shower prison rape fantasies. If that is wrong I do not want to be right

Hey, Teddy, I’m not about making anybody feel bad! I’m just saying, you and I are in the driver’s seat for our fantasies, right? When an author takes the wheel, sometimes bad bad mojo happens…

Right but OZ had a writer involved somewhere. Beechum and Keller had a love that dare not scream it’s name.

Keller betrayed Beechum
Beechum betrayed Keller

Their love was whack
Their love had a violent head wound
Their love had a body count

But you can’t tell me after even after all the rape scenes and the betrayals and the murders… watching Keller tie Beechum up bleeding and hold a knife at his throat just to give him a big old sloppy kiss… well, right then and there secretly you have to admit you are hoping they get an HEA.

It’s wrong, you know it’s wrong, but you do.

Sorry, I’m one of those terminally uncool people who have never had cable, so I haven’t actually seen the show. But clearly that storyline worked for you. Which begs the question: Do people really get off on watching/reading about it when they see it as rape, or only when they read into the situation some tenderness, however twisted, like that sloppy kiss?

I do not think it’s any wholesale sure fire way to sell a violent love story which is what I think we are talking about.

This conversation proves it, I am not saying there are not bad examples all over the place. Just from experience I am saying that rape is not an absolute deal killer, nor is betrayal, nor is forced sex.

The only thing that seems true is making the characters and the relationship so intense, so epic, so positively life changing, that even with every nasty thing they do sorta pales in comparison.

Teddy,

Do you suppose you’d relate differently to your rape fantasies if you knew that in reality you couldn’t go around half of the human race (at work, at school, at the grocery store) without knowing that a significant number of them have--through mass media, genres of music, conversations they’ve had all their life, pornography-- internalized the idea of you as a object for sexual domination by virtue of your body’s appearance alone?

You’ve suffered abuse; as a gay man, I understand that you’re also vulnerable to violence, murder, rape in ways that straight men aren’t, but you can pass for the class of people who don’t have to worry so much about having the boundaries of their bodies violated in ways that the women who post here can’t. When I read a story about these things, or interact with my own fantasies, it’s never just a fantasy; I’m relating to the historical present of mass violation, murder, rape and domination against women, and to the current social and legal realities of my world.

I don’t approve or disapprove of fantasies; I disapprove of arguing that “forced sex” is or ever was okay, or not really rape, because of what a culture that spoke with the mouth of the dominating class said. Women were not the creators of these cultural mores; they were the objects of them. If we accept them, we’d have to retroactively accept the righteousness of the abuses committed against women under them. That’s as unappealing as prospect to me as excusing a man who commits an “honor killing” because that’s part of the power his culture has given to him over the women of his family.

~~Women were not the creators of these cultural mores; they were the objects of them. If we accept them, we’d have to retroactively accept the righteousness of the abuses committed against women under them. That’s as unappealing as prospect to me as excusing a man who commits an “honor killing” because that’s part of the power his culture has given to him over the women of his family.~

Uh-oh, somehow I have the feeling that my argument about taking into account culture and historical mores didn’t cut it there.

Rape is rape, no matter what period or culture, in my opinion. What annoys me about historical romance is that it seems to be considered a given that heroes or otherwise would come up with the idea to rape their wife because it’s their conjugal right. No doubt about it then and now it does happen, and there’s no excuse for it.

But what I always find difficult to buy is that considering cultural values e.g. a woman has to have an orgasm to conceive etc, a hero’s first idea would be to rape his wife. If his idea is to have an heir that would be counter-productive and if that’s the extent of biological knowledge too, then it must seem like a means of birth control. Samuel Pepys incidentally thought precisely the latter after a consensual quickie in a carriage, noting in his diary that there wouldn’t be any consequences since she hadn’t had an orgasm.

Equally, I get irritated with a historical heroine who marries and expects not to have sex. Hello? Go forth and multiply?

My disbelief at the whole scenario stems from the assumption that is made in historical romances that a) just because some law says they can, all husbands would think it’s a good idea to rape their wives, b) even though sex in marriage is expected heroines would expect not to have any and c) - personal pet peeve…

c) Regardless of time, culture etc, I cannot imagine, regardless of what my environment tells me about conjugal rights etc to fall in love with some hero after he’s raped me. If I could - in the mindset of a heroine- convince myself that yeah, it was his right and actually manage to lie back and think of England from then on, maybe there’d be some sort of living in icy civility together. But it’s supposed to be a story about two people falling in love, right?

It fails me how a heroine can fall in love with her rapist after he’s hurt and humiliated her. For me that defies belief. Culture, morals etc aside, I just don’t buy it.

Sorry for ranting again, just got the feeling that I hadn’t made myself very clear in my earlier post. ;-)

I think I’m just going to be repeating some other people now, but I did want to say to Sarah that I didn’t mean to imply that you said marital rape was okay or permissible, even in the historical context.

However, I don’t know that I could read a book where the hero rapes the heroine--in ANY context--and be able to stomach the HEA.

In part, this is b/c, as everyone has already said, romance novels are fantasy. I also do not want to see an unfaithful hero or a slave-owning hero. I can imagine a book in which the unfaithful, slave-owning hero might not be a total unredeemable dick, but I don’t necessarily want to read it. If I want historical accuracy, I’ll read something really depressing.

That said...has anyone else read Jude the Obscure? What do you do with Sue Bridehead’s relationships? She’s never gotten over her horror of sex, but she slept with Jude and, in the end, forces herself to sleep with her husband, despite her terror. Her ending is nauseating to me. Her husband (whose name I am blanking on) isn’t necessarily a rapist, but it’s not exactly consent, either. Ugh.

Speaking of sex and marriage.  I have hens that I raised from chicks because I want fresh eggs.

I have a Chinese Silky Rooster (Puff Daddy) who’ve I’ve had for a while that has ignored these silly babies from day one. 

Until a week ago, when I hear blood curdling squawks in the back.  I’m thinking “There’s a stray dog in the yard! OH NO!”

So I run out to rescue my girls and there is Puff in a dead run behind Abigail Araucana--- she’s the one screaming bloody murder. 

In the process of all this, Puff also manages to peck one of the cats on the back of the head, turn on a dime and take off after Della Dominique.

I email a chicken raising buddy asking why Puff was chasing everyone.......

Uh, yeah, seems that’s chicken courtship, AKA Rooster Rape.  I thought there’d be a little more romance involved.  Silly me.

Do you suppose you’d relate differently to your rape fantasies if you knew that in reality you couldn’t go around half of the human race (at work, at school, at the grocery store) without knowing that a significant number of them have--through mass media, genres of music, conversations they’ve had all their life, pornography-- internalized the idea of you as a object for sexual domination by virtue of your body’s appearance alone?

Angel, why do you think that men do not get raped in real life? They do you know. That scene in Deliverance *Squeal like a pig!* did not come out of no where. In fact male rape is still not addressed very well in our society.

You are making your statement in regards to fiction writing. My point is that there is very good writing out there even in regards to gay romance that includes rape and all sorts of violent acts that is damn good.

It does not mean in real life I condone those acts or the people who would actually act out such things. I am saying that it’s OK to like that writing and even those particular scenes and think they are hot.

They were written to be hot and if the writer is good and makes it work then I refuse to feel bad for admiring them.

I disapprove of arguing that “forced sex” is or ever was okay

Well then, you are gonna have an issue with most of history then. Your view point is not viable outside of this day and age. What you see as abuse in other times would be seen as just life and part of a lesson someone had to learn. That is just the way things were.

I bought that silly 300 dvd yesterday and was amazed that they never up front addressed the fact that entire culture was totally about the gay male relationship. In fact they were big on the man/boy love. The creators totally ignored what was really going on there and the why that they are well remembered in history.

It’s fine they did that, obviously people would have had an issue with a real depiction of that culture but in my opinion it made the whole work suspect and unrealistic.

Teddy, Angel never said that men were not subject to rape. What she said was that men, as a whole, do not have to be constantly aware of the possibility of rape in every situation. Men get raped. MEN GET RAPED. I do not want to diminish that, or the horror of it.

However, the fact is that, statistically (in the US alone--I just looked at US statistics), 1 in 33 men are likely to be raped or assaulted, where as 1 in 6 women face the same fate.

That doesn’t make rape or domination fantasies wrong. I think, however, that Angel was trying to say that SOME women MIGHT have different reactions to rape fantasies than men simply because rape is something most of us think about every day. Every time I walk to my car at night alone; every time I am alone in the huge university library; if I’m out on a date--rape is always a possibility. So rape fantasies? Do not do it for me.

But that’s me. Another woman might have an entirely different feeling about this, and that’s her perogative. No judgment from me. :)

What you see as abuse in other times would be seen as just life and part of a lesson someone had to learn. That is just the way things were.

Oooookay...so...burning heretics alive is not something I should look back and judge? I should be okay with it, b/c it was just “part of life”? What about apartheid? Female genital mutilation? Why is it that we can look to these horrific historical or contemporary events--events and customs that were and are justified at the time because they are considered to be not morally right, but important for the well-being of society and even foundational FOR that society, and say that they’re bad, but we can’t look back on forced sex and say the same thing? Why is it naive to say that rape at any period of time is bad, even if the people involved didn’t always think so, if it’s not also naive to say that burning heretics is bad?

In other words, just b/c rape is and has been a fundamental part of society for longer than history has been written, that does not make it RIGHT, and I, for one, refuse to accept it as such, just b/c my ancestors might have done. I accept that it happened. I do not accept that everyone liked it or that it was ever right.

In other words, just b/c rape is and has been a fundamental part of society for longer than history has been written, that does not make it RIGHT, and I, for one, refuse to accept it as such, just b/c my ancestors might have done. I accept that it happened. I do not accept that everyone liked it or that it was ever right.

I am saying that you should be careful in defining moral absolutes in regards to someone who struggled in context to survive in an earlier age.

If someone is struggling with starvation they most likely do not place a high priority on sexual child abuse they lived through, in fact they or their parents may have used that for them to have survived.

George Washington owned slaves and in fact took actions to maintain ownership of slaves during his lifetime. Despite all that we still consider him a great man. He is fascinating because there is evidence he struggled with this.

Why is it naive to say that rape at any period of time is bad, even if the people involved didn’t always think so

Because you are attributing a moral absolute, a universal truth to be used in all circumstances and judging based on current values not on the ones the people involved had in context to the culture in which they were raised and what was done to them.

I think bringing up the burning of heretics is interesting because they were also judged using the same reasoning of moral absolutes. Religion is like that.

Despite all that we still consider him a great man.

We do? That generally gets whitewashed along with the deaths of all the Native Americans he was ultimately responsible for.

It’s quite true that even today’s society tends to think that the rape of women is no big deal and is something she lied about or invited in some way. Since current rape isn’t all that much of a shock, it’s no real surprise that historical rape isn’t either.

Well Miranda,

That is like holding Junípero Serra in contempt for the loss of the Native Americans of California.

These people felt they were doing the right thing and just like most of us now whitewashing how we are polluting the environment faster than anyone in history thus bankrupting our future. It’s just easier that way.

Honestly, Teddy, I think you’re conflating arguments about historical reality with arguments about romance novels. Do I think less of Thomas Jefferson because he owned slaves and had children with at least one of them? Yes, I do, somewhat. But it does not diminish the good things he did, and I still regard him as a great figure in American history. (Don’t get me started on Andrew Jackson, however, unless you’ve got a year or so to listen to me rant.)

Just b/c I can respect Jefferson, though, does not mean that I want to read a romance novel about him and Sally Hemans. I do not go to romance for an accurate and morally relative view of history. I go to it for fun and romance and a bit of erotic fantasy.

I am saying that you should be careful in defining moral absolutes in regards to someone who struggled in context to survive in an earlier age.

True. But not everyone struggled to survive. Do we only excuse the lower classes, then? Is it okay to lynch African-Americans if you’re a poor white person who barely scrapes by and who is on the verge of starvation? Or is it only okay to rape if you’re in that situation, while the wealthier classes should not be excused from this?

I have never thought of myself as a moral absolutist. Nor do I think of myself as a moral relativist. Maybe I’m a bad liberal, but I do believe in right and wrong across time and culture--it’s just that the way those rights and wrongs were expressed may be different.

That does not mean, however, that the rape of the Sabine women isn’t going to make me ill. Or the rape of Nanking, for that matter, which may be justified from a certain (sick) point of view--it’s what happens in war, right? The problem with true relativism is that it doesn’t just span time--it spans cultures, too.

Is cutting off a little girl’s clitoris with a sharp rock okay just b/c it’s accepted in her culture? I don’t believe that. Maybe I can’t change it, but I refuse to accept that it’s right. Ever. Just like I refuse to accept discrimination is ever right, just because it was right at some point in time, or because some people in my own culture believe that it’s right and morally imperative to treat others like second-class citizens.

By that same argument, slavery was acceptable and necessary--because people really believed that it was. You still haven’t answered my question, either. Why is rape okay, if slavery and all of these other horrific events aren’t? Or do you believe all of those things were okay, too? You can’t have it both ways.

Why Snarkhunter,

When people use the appeal to emotion arguments and straw man arguments I just lob them back